Rundu shocked over suspected ritual killing

Grisly find… The floating bridge where the dead body was discovered by a pedestrian crossing the bridge to the Angolan side. The bridge was constructed in 2014 to make movements between the town of Rundu and Calai on the Angolan side easy.

Rundu

The body of an unidentified man, believed to be between 30 to 40, found floating with some private parts missing on Sunday in the Kavango River near the floating bridge that links Rundu with the Angolan village Calai opposite Rundu, has sent shockwaves through the town.

Some residents who spoke to New Era who are shocked beyond measure believe the man’s private parts were hacked off possibly by ritual killers, who normally use human body parts in black magic concoctions thought to multiply the riches of run-of-the mill businesses.

Residents that spoke to this publication, but were too scared to have their names mentioned, said the dead body was found or noticed by a person who was crossing the bridge, after he sniffed the bad smell of rotting flesh. He got curious about where the stench was emanating from and to his horror he saw the dead body stuck under the bridge.

The body was floating from east to west and got stuck under the bridge.

The person who discovered the body then alerted the police and custom officials on both sides of the border that Sunday morning who then came to fetch the body.

“The body was found floating in the river, blocked by the bridge on the Angolan side of the river and we could not determine the cause of death yet,” said the Kavango East Acting Crime Investigations Coordinator, Chief Inspector Chrispin Mubebo.

Sources who were at the scene told New Era the genitals appeared to have been cut off with a sharp object, but the police are yet to ascertain whether the missing body parts were eaten by fish or whether there was a human hand involved in hacking off the missing parts.

“I was informed that the genitals were cut off but we cannot tell whether they were cut off by a person or something else. We have to wait for a post-mortem by a doctor to tell us what really happened, but something is a bit funny there,” Mubebo told New Era.

“The body was taken to Rundu state mortuary at the Rundu intermediate hospital and it’s not yet identified,” Mubebo said.

In other similar news, still on Sunday morning at about 10h00 at Kayengona village east of Rundu along the gravel road, a 33-year-old woman, Haupindi Ingrit, drowned in the Kavango River while swimming with some relatives. Her relatives could not save her.